Stingy Founder of ‘Genius Grants’ Was No Fan of Charity

John D. MacArthur, though now a famous philanthropist, had no love for charity.
Source: MacArthur Foundation

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- It is a delicious bit of irony
that the last name of a compulsive tightwad has entered the
national vocabulary as a one-word descriptor for one of
America’s most generous philanthropic awards. Artists and
scientists and academics can now win “a MacArthur” just as
they win a Pulitzer, a Fulbright or a Guggenheim.

Yesterday, the newest batch of MacArthur fellowships
was announced by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. The 23 winners of these “genius awards” --
including the novelist Junot Diaz and the mandolin player
Chris Thile -- will each be given no-strings grants of
$500,000 over five years to “advance their expertise,
engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, change fields or
alter the direction of their careers.”

The money that funds this largess was earned by an
admired (and hated) modern-day Midas who was so obsessed
with thriftiness he left corporate office walls half-painted and poured unfinished cups of coffee back into a
hotel restaurant coffee urn. (Of course, he owned the
hotel.)

More irony: A lifelong, unreconstructed womanizer,
John D. MacArthur was nevertheless one of the first tycoons
to insist that his wife’s name be part of the official name
of the foundation he reluctantly agreed to fund (only to
avoid taxes). “Put Catherine’s name in there -- she helped
build it up,” said MacArthur, according to lawyer William
Kirby, who sat with the pair at the kitchen table of their
apartment in a modest -- some would say tacky -- beachfront
Florida hotel in October 1970.

‘Making It’

Although MacArthur had some “pet charities” and there
were stories of private generosity to some employees and
their families, he had no great philanthropic vision. “I’m
going to do what I do best,” he told Kirby. “I am going to
keep making it” -- that is, money --“you guys will have to
figure out after I am dead what to do with it.”

As he told a documentary interviewer, “I don’t want to
be known as a philanthropist. I would be a sucker.”

“I don’t want to pretend that he was any gem of a
charity because he sure as hell was not,” Kirby told an
interviewer after MacArthur’s death. “He thought the money
came from the people and should go back to the people.”
(Although not through taxes.)

MacArthur was a controversial business genius himself,
in insurance and real estate, and was probably the second-richest man in the country when he died in January 1978.
This was three years before the announcement of the first
genius awards (a term, incidentally, that is frowned upon
by the foundation, which says it looks for qualities
besides genius).

In August 1978, Kirby, a member of the foundation’s
board, brought to a meeting an editorial titled “Of Venture
Research,” written by an innovative cardiologist named
George E. Burch. The editorial, which appeared in the
American Heart Journal, said thinkers needed time and space
to think “without the annoyances and distractions imposed
by grant application, reviewing committees, and pressure to
publish.” It suggested an unorthodox approach to grant
making that had particular appeal to a fledgling foundation
looking for ways to use money accumulated by an unorthodox
man.

Freeing Genius

MacArthur’s son, John Roderick MacArthur (known as
Rod), was also on the board. His legendary fights with
Kirby and other board members turned early meetings into
roiling, contentious knuckle bruisers. But this time the
two were in agreement: In an amazing bit of cooperation,
MacArthur and Kirby would share the credit for making an
expansive idea of no-strings grants a reality. As Rod
MacArthur explained in interviews, he wanted to free
“genius” from “the bureaucratic pettiness of academe.”
These grants would go to individuals, not institutions.
“Albert Einstein could not have written a grant application
saying he was going to discover the theory of relativity,”
he said.

The first 21 MacArthur fellowships were announced in
June 1981. The winners would receive, among other things,
“the gift of time,” wrote Denise Shekerjian in her 1990
book, “Uncommon Genius.” Although the fellowships these
days account for only about 5 percent of the foundation’s
annual grants, they are by far the best-known of its
programs.

By the end of his life, John MacArthur had mellowed a
bit about what would happen after he was no longer able to
call all the shots. There was no point trying to run things
from the grave, he told a reporter. “You have changing
times. Besides, you lay down rules and people don’t follow
them. So I’ll trust to the Almighty that my trustees will
do more good for the country than I would.”

Some critics charge that the foundation has funded
more liberal social activism -- even in its selection of
fellows -- than the archconservative who made the money
would have tolerated. But who knows? MacArthur’s life was
almost as rich in paradox as it was in dollars.